The present invention relates generally to manually propelled personal watercraft devices and, more particularly, to watercraft devices that are manually propelled by the natural bipedal walking movement of a user.
Manually propelled watercraft devices, such as row boats, paddle boats and the like, are well-known. However, in all such devices, the user is generally in a seated position and thus must impart unnatural, device-specific movement to propel the boat, such as a rowing motion or paddle wheel motion with rotating pedals on a crank arm similar to a bicycle.
There have been some attempts to utilize cross-country skiing motion, while the user is in a substantially upright position in order to mimic a more natural movement, to propel a boat. However, it is often difficult for the user to maintain his balance or the device translating the cross-country skiing motion requires complicated mechanisms to propel the boat. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,194,023 discloses a recreational watercraft that can be propelled by a user performing a cross-country skiing action by simultaneously moving both his feet and arms in a well-known, cross-country skiing-like manner. However, the watercraft uses a complicated cable and pulley system in order to translate the cross-country skiing action into propulsion for the watercraft. Further, only one arm and foot combination can be used at a time, while the other arm and foot combination remain in a locked position towards the front of the craft.